Speakers & Panelists

Distinguished Professor, University of Tasmania

Donald Chalmers is Distinguished Professor at the University of Tasmania and in the Centre for Law and Genetics. He is a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.  In 2010, he received the NHMRC Ethics Award, the Distinguished Service Medal, University of Tasmania and the Australian Red Cross Distinguished Service Award.  His major research interests focus on medical research ethics and the regulatory aspects of human genetics. He has been chief investigator on Australian Research Council discovery grants, with colleagues on the legal, ethical and governance implications of genetics, particularly commercialisation, biobanking and personalised medicine and on an NHMRC program grant on cancer genetics, He has published in health law and genetics, research ethics and law reform criminal law, legal studies trusts, authored a number of government and Law Reform Commissioner reports and made regular submissions to government enquiries. Throughout his career, he has been involved in teaching, administration and served on many State, national and international committees.

Associate Professor, Department of Cancer Control and Policy, Graduate School of Cancer Science and Policy, National Cancer Center

Associate scientist, Hospice & Palliative Care Branch, National Cancer Center

Expert secretory, Team of legislation, ethics & policy, Precision Medicine Working Group, Ministry of Health & Welfare, South Korea

Yoon-Jung Chang, M.D., Ph.D, is actively participated in policy development in hospice & palliative care (HPC) in South Korea. She was a representative interviewee of South Korea for ‘the 2015 Quality of Death Index: Ranking palliative care across the world’ a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Her major research interests focus on HPC policy, and risk communication and biomedical ethics in cancer care & Cancer research. Recently she joined the Precision Medicine Working Group, Ministry of Health & Welfare as an expert secretory.

Director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics

Professor, Harvard Law School

Glenn Cohen is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics.  He is one of the world’s leading experts on the intersection of bioethics and the law, as well as health law.  He was the youngest professor on the faculty at Harvard Law School both when he joined the faculty in 2008 (at age 29) and when he was tenured as a full professor in 2013 (at age 34).  His current research projects relate to health information technologies, mobile health, reproductive technology, research ethics, rationing in law and medicine, health policy, FDA law and medical tourism.  He is the author of more than 70 articles and chapters and his award-winning work has appeared in leading legal medical, bioethics, and public health journals.   Prior to becoming a professor he served as a law clerk to Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and as a lawyer for U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Appellate Staff, where he handled litigation in the Courts of Appeals and (in conjunction with the Solicitor General’s Office) in the U.S. Supreme Court.  In his spare time, he still litigates, most recently having authored an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court for leading gene scientist Eric Lander in Association of Molecular Pathology v. Myriad, concerning whether human genes are patent eligible subject matter, a brief that was extensively discussed by the Justices at oral argument.

Professor, Stanford Law School

Hank Greely is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics at Stanford University.  He specializes in ethical, legal, and social issues arising from advances in the biosciences, particularly from genetics, neuroscience, and human stem cell research.  He directs the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Program on Neuroscience in Society; chairs the California Advisory Committee on Human Stem Cell Research; and serves on the Neuroscience Forum of the Institute of Medicine, the Advisory Council for the National Institute for General Medical Sciences of NIH, the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law of the National Academy of Sciences, and the NIH Multi-Council Working Group on the BRAIN Initiative. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007.   He graduated from Stanford in 1974 and from Yale Law School in 1977.  He served as a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom on the United States Court of Appeals and for Justice Potter Stewart of the United States Supreme Court.  After working during the Carter Administration in the Departments of Defense and Energy, he entered private practice in Los Angeles in 1981 as a litigator with the law firm of Tuttle & Taylor, Inc.  He began teaching at Stanford in 1985.

As Head of Humanities at the PHG Foundation, Alison is actively involved in policy analysis, evaluation and implementation. Professionally qualified as a lawyer and a nurse, with a master’s qualification in health care ethics, her work focuses on ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) in biomedical technologies, and includes regulatory and legal policy analysis and briefings on the governance of human tissue, data protection and in vitro-diagnostic devices reform.  Recent work includes leading a two year policy development project working with stakeholders on the ethical, legal and societal implications of implementing genomic sequencing into clinical practice (Hall A, Finnegan T, Alberg C, PHG Foundation (2014) Realising Genomics in Clinical Practice. ISBN 978-1-907198-15-1) and contributing legal and regulatory analysis to a report on data sharing to support clinical genetics and genomics practice (Data sharing to support UK clinical genetics and genomics services, PHG Foundation (2015) ISBN 978-1-907198-20-5). At EU policy level, with the Wellcome Trust, she has led advocacy on the genetic testing provisions in the proposed EU in vitro diagnostic devices regulation. Internationally, she has chaired a group developing a Data Sharing Lexicon as part of the regulatory and ethics activities of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. She has also co-authored PHG Foundation reports on ethical, legal and societal impacts of biotechnological advances including genomic stratification in cancer prevention and non-invasive prenatal diagnosis, and has over 20 peer-reviewed publications. Nationally, she has contributed to professional guidance including ‘Consent and Confidentiality in Clinical Genetic Practice’ published by the UK Joint Committee on Genomics in Medicine.  She is currently on the UK Data Access Committee for METADAC, on the ethics and policy committee of the British Society for Genetic Medicine, and is a lay member of an NHS research ethics committee.

Assistant Professor/ Assistant Research Fellow, Academia Sinica

Dr. Chih-hsing Ho is Assistant Professor/Assistant Research Fellow at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Her research focuses on the nexus of law and medicine in general, with particular attention to the governance of genomics and newly emerging biotechnologies, such as big data and biobanks. She is currently a Co-Principal Investigator for a health cloud project in Taiwan, and is responsible for designing an adequate regulatory framework for the secondary use of personal data and health-related data linkage. She holds a Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics (LSE) where she was an Olive Stone Scholar. She obtained her first law degree from Taiwan, and later received her LLM from Columbia Law School and a JSM from Stanford University. Before moving back to Taipei in 2014, she had been working at the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law (CMEL) at the University of Hong Kong.

Dr Stuart Hogarth is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine at King’s College London. His research focuses on the political economy of diagnostic innovation. His work combines empirical research on the development, assessment and adoption of diagnostic technologies, with normative analysis of public policy and commercial strategy. He has produced reports on intellectual property rights and regulatory frameworks in personalised medicine for the European Commission, Health Canada and the Human Genetics Commission.

Associate Professor, McGill University

Yann Joly, Ph.D. (DCL), Ad.E. is a Lawyer Emeritus from the Quebec Bar and the Research Director of the Centre of Genomics and Policies(CGP). He is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Human Genetics and, at the Bioethics Unit, at McGill University. He is a research fellow from the Fonds de recherche du Québec- Santé (FRQS) and an associate researcher at the Centre de recherche en  droit public (Université de Montréal). He also works as an ethics and legal consultant in the private sector. Prof. Joly is the Data Access Officer of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC). His research activities lie at the interface of the fields of intellectual property, health law (biotechnology and other emerging health technologies) and bioethics. He has served as a legal advisor on several ethics committees in the public and private sectors. Prof. Joly is a member of the Scientific Committee of the legal journal Lex Elextronica and an Advisory Board member of the Current Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine Journal. He recently received the Quebec Bar Award of Merit (Innovation) for his work on the right to privacy in the biomedical field.

Co-Director, Centre for Medical Ethics and Law

Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong

Terry Kaan is a co-director of the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law and an associate professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong. Terry Kaan’s research interests span from tort law to medical ethics and law. He has published articles and book chapters with regard to the issues of traditional, contemporary and alternative medicine, and genetic privacy. His current research is on how genetic testing impacts doctor-patient relationship.

Professor and Chair

Department of the History of Medicine and Medical Humanities

College of Medicine Seoul National University

Ock-Joo Kim, M.D., Ph. D., a graduate from Seoul National University College of Medicine trained in biomedical ethics and medical history in University of Minnesota, Harvard University and Western IRB, is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Medical History and Medical Humanities, Seoul National University College of Medicine. Since 2002 she has worked in research governance system including establishment of KAIRB (Korean Association of IRBs). After the Hwang Scandal, she collaborated with various governmental agencies and academia to rebuilding research ethics system and promoting research ethics education in Korea. As an expert in biomedical research ethics, she got involved in the total revision of Bioethics and Safety Act and the operation of National Bioethics Policy Institute. She is currently the director of the Center for Human Research Protection at the Seoul National University Hospital and members of the IRBs in university and hospitals. She serves as a member of governments various committees in bioethics including Central Advisory Committee of Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Administration, and Expert Committee under National Bioethics Review Boards. As a member of Board of Trustees of the Korean Bioethics Association, and the Korean Society for Medical Ethics, she played major roles in publishing biomedical ethics textbooks in Korea, including Clinical Ethics (2014), Medical Ethics (2015).  Her main research areas are clinical ethics, research ethics, and public health ethics, publishing many articles including a recently published, “Ethical considerations of MERS-CoV outbreaks in Korea.”

Professor, McGill University

Bartha Maria Knoppers, PhD (Comparative Medical Law), holds the Canada Research Chair in Law and Medicine (Tier 1: 2001 – ). She is Director of the Centre of Genomics and Policy, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Human Genetics, McGill University. In 2007, she founded the international Population Project in Genomics and Society (P3G) and CARTaGENE Quebec’s population biobank (20,000 indiv.). Former holder of the Chair d’excellence Pierre Fermat (France: 2006 – 2008), she was named Distinguished Visiting Scientist (Netherlands Genomics Initiative) (2009 – 2012) and received the ACFAS prize for multidisciplinarity (2011). She is Chair of the Ethics Working Party of the International Stem Cell Forum (2005 – ); Co-Chair of the Sampling/ELSI Committee of the 1000 Genomes Project (2007 – 2013); Member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) (2009- ); Chair, Regulatory and Ethics Working Group – Co-Founder and Member, Transitional Steering Committee (TSC) of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. She holds four Doctorates Honoris Causa, is Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of The Hastings Center (Bioethics) and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS) and Officer of the Order of Canada and of Quebec. She also received an award “Prix Montreal In Vivo: Secteur des sciences de la vie et des technologies de la santé” in 2012 and in 2013 was named “Champion of Genetics” by the Canadian Gene Cure Foundation.

Chair Professor of Paediatrics, Doris Zimmern Professor in Community Child Health, Department of Paediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, The University of Hong Kong

Professor Lau is the Chair Professor of Paediatrics, Doris Zimmern Professor in Community Child Health, Chief Director of Clinical Trials of Centre of the University of Hong Kong, President of the Hong Kong College of Paediatricians, President of the Asian Society for Pediatric Research and Deputy for Teaching & Research of the HKU Shenzhen Hospital. He with 60 colleagues established a new Asia Pacific Society for Immunodeficiencies to be inaugurated in Hong Kong 2016.

He initiated universal pneumococcal vaccination during his chairmanship of the Working Group on Pneumococcal Vaccination; and universal screening for HIV infection in pregnant mothers, during his chairmanship of the Scientific Committee on AIDS. He has published 350 original papers and supervised 30 graduate students. He received the Outstanding Researcher Award and the Faculty Award on Knowledge Exchange from the University of Hong Kong. Recently he received the Outstanding Pediatrician Award from the Asia Pacific Pediatric Association in 2016.

Director, Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences

Herschel Smith Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law, University of Cambridge

Kathy Liddell is Herschel Smith Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law and Director of the Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences in the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on a variety of issues such as patent protection in the field of pharmaceuticals and medical diagnostics, and the regulation of medical research and complex technologies such as genetic testing and stem cell products. She is the author of a wide range of articles in leading academic journals, a number of reports and briefing papers, and is co-editor of The Limits of Consent (OUP 2009).

Philomathia Post Doctoral Research Associate, University of Cambridge

John Liddicoat is the Philomathia Post-Doctoral Research Associate in Intellectual Property Law and Genetics in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. John joined the University of Cambridge in October 2015 after submitting his PhD at the University of Tasmania; he also holds a BSc(Hons) and LLB(Hons) from the University of Melbourne. His research interests broadly lie in the development and use of new technology. John has published work on various intellectual property law issues, and enjoys commentating on doctrinal issues as well as emergent scientific issues – he is particularly interested in genomic and biotechnology related developments. John has a keen interest in the design of legal research and uses a broad range of qualitative and quantitative methods. His two current primary areas of research are: 1. Investigating the role of intellectual property rights in genomic medicine; and 2. Examining innovation policies adopted by biobanks. John has also contributed to law reform in Australia. He has co-authored submissions to various law reform enquiries and has also been invited to give oral evidence to a legislative committee.

WYNG Research Fellow in Medical Law and Ethics, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge

Colm McGrath is the WYNG Research Fellow in Medical Law and Ethics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and is a member of the Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences based at the Faculty of Law where he has taught Tort Law, Contract Law, Comparative Law, European Legal History and Roman law. Between 2009 and 2014 he was a scientific assistant at the Institute for European Tort Law in Vienna and a lecturer at the University of Graz where he taught private law and healthcare law. His research focuses on the comparative analysis of private law and the nature of professional liability, in particular the liability and regulation of the medical profession. He is the Co-General Editor of the long-running Journal of Professional Negligence and the Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of European Tort Law.

Timo Minssen is Associate Professor of IP- & Innovation Law at the University of Copenhagen, Centre for Information & Innovation Law (CIIR). His research concentrates on Intellectual Property-, Competition- & Regulatory Law with a special focus on the pharma, life science & biotech sectors. His studies comprise a broad variety of legal issues that emerge during the lifecycle of related products and processes –  from the regulation of research and incentives for innovation to technology transfer and commercialization. Timo is also scientific advisory board member of the Copenhagen Centre for Regulatory Sciences (CORS) and co-heads the Copenhagen Biotech & Pharma Forum (CBPF). He is a frequent lecturer on a variety of biotech and pharma related topics with many publications in leading international journals. In 2012 he published the comprehensive study “Assessing the Inventiveness of Biopharmaceutical Technology under European and US Patent Law”, which was awarded with the Swedish King Oscar stipendium. He is also a regular contributor on Harvard Law School’s “Bill of Health” blog. At present he is collaborating with Oxford University Press on a book in pharmaceutical competition law.

Professor, Lingnan University

Darrell P. Rowbottom is Professor and Head of Philosophy at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His research focuses on general issues in the philosophy of science (e.g. scientific method, scientific realism, and scientific progress) and the philosophy of probability (e.g. intersubjective probability and measurement paradoxes). He also has interests in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of education. His textbook Probability was recently published by Polity Press; an edition in simplified Chinese is set to be published by Shanghai People’s Publishing House. He is currently completing a research monograph, The Instrument of Science, which articulates and defends a new form of instrumentalism about science.

Deputy Director, Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences

Lecturer, University of Cambridge

Jeffrey Skopek is a Lecturer in Medical Law, Ethics, and Policy in the Faculty of Law of the University of Cambridge.  He is also Deputy Director of the Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences.   His research interests centre on advances in the biosciences that destabilize categories and concepts that play a foundational role in our law and ethics. He is currently working on projects that explore challenges posed by developments in personalized medicine, biobanking, and big data.  He previously taught at Harvard Law School, where he was a research fellow at the Petrie-Flom Centre for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.  Prior to entering academia, he served as a law clerk to the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He has been awarded Fulbright, Gates, and Truman Scholarships and holds a J.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Law School, a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge, and an A.B. in History (with distinction) from Stanford University.

Ron Zimmern

Ron Zimmern is a Public Health Physician with a special interest in public health genomics and personalised medicine.  He is Chairman of the Foundation for Genomics and Population Health, the ‘PHG Foundation’, the successor to the Public Health Genetics Unit which he established in Cambridge in June 1997 and on which he served as its Director until 2010.

Ron graduated in 1971 following medical training at Trinity College, Cambridge and the Middlesex Hospital, London.  He specialised initially in neurology, and was appointed Lecturer at the Clinical School in Cambridge in 1976.  He obtained a law degree at Cambridge in 1983, after which he trained in public health medicine.  He was Director of Public Health for Cambridge and Huntingdon Health Authority from 1991 to 1998, and of the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge from 2002 to 2008. He was for many years an Associate Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and has been an Honorary Consultant in Public Health Medicine at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

Ron has served on many national committees concerned with genomics in the UK since 1997. He has an Honorary Professorship in Public Health at the University of Hong Kong and sits on the Management Committee of its Centre for Medical Ethics and Law.  He is also a member of the External Advisory Committee of the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences within the Law Faculty; and of the Centre for Personalised Medicine at St Anne’s College, Oxford.  He is a Life Fellow of Hughes Hall in Cambridge and a Fellow of Hong Kong University and of the University of Cardiff. He now serves as a Non-Executive Director of Papworth Hospital and on the Ethics Advisory Committee of Genomics England.  His special interests and expertise, in addition to public health genomics and personalised medicine, include strategic planning, the relationship between clinical services and teaching and research, priority setting in the NHS, and the law and ethics of medicine.